EA Really Doesn't Want to be The Worst Company In America

[bug_of_war]

Now, I think those two examples of Customer Support are not quite comparable, paraphrasing aside.

Your counter example is essentially Valve being uncooperative, reluctant to return a sale and arrogantly acting like they're only giving you a refund out of the kindness of their hearts. It's perfectly understandable that you find this frustrating, because there's no reason why you should be stuck with a game that doesn't work, but by the looks of it they eventually, albeit reluctantly, gave you a process to fixing the problem, i.e. contacting Ubisoft and trading emails. That's saying "We don't want to give you your money back and we're going to make it unnecessarily hard for no reason... But fine, here you go, because we're such nice people."

However, the original example is EA being an complete and utter douche bag, starting out with some simple troubleshooting offers before essentially saying 'delete all of your program files, because fuck you', barely bothering to disguise it as technical support. That isn't being helpful. That isn't even trying to prevent a refund (god forbid), because the guy never asked for it. That's nothing more than pulling the finger and saying "We already have your money, we won't even bother helping you with simple frame rate issues. So fucking deal with it."

I'm sorry, but I don't see how your example holds water compared to wAriot's. I get that you were treated badly for asking for a refund, but at least you weren't insulted and bullshitted for having the audacity to ask how to get more than 30 frames per second.

And yes, I DO understand that Customer Support staff are hardly representatives of the appropriate corporation.

How are the examples not similar (besides mine being entirely paraphrasing, really wish I kept the emails)? Both show the customer service people basically just trying to move us along. Valve did not show me the way to get into contact with Ubisoft, they just told me to do so. I had to go and figure out how to get into contact with them about one of their games and how this is the hardware I had and this is the programs I was using etc. etc. and Ubisoft were actually really helpful. Valve on the other hand gave me the impression that I was being a nuisance and only gave me the refund after I had extensive amount of proof that I was not lying. I get why they needed proof, but I felt like I was being treated very poorly for a customer who had been using Steam for 4 years without making a sound.

Wariot's example is a good one of EA's terrible CS, but at no point did I see any indication that they were saying "Delete this cause fuck you", they just say, "delete this and see what happens". Yes it's poor customer service, but they were not openly insulting the person, they were trying to move them along, which is poor practice but not an open "FUCK YOU CUSTOMER".

I think both examples hold the same amount of water (bar mine has no photo copied evidence and is entirely paraphrased) and whilst the examples are of different circumstances it still shows that neither EA or Valve have very good customer service. I am a customer, just like everyone else here, who was not pleased with the way my case was handled, and for you to say that MY example holds no water makes me question whether or not we are arguing about companies needing to do better, or just you personally wanting to see EA wither and die (which quite a number of people on this site want to see happen).

 

[JET1971]

I have ever only had minor complaints about EA but those minor complaints dwarf my complaints of other companies when there are so many of them. No other company have I ever bought products from has recieved as many complaints. My biggest complaint is buying an IP or studio then meddling in the story, gameplay, and features then closing the studio down because that meddling killed the IP's potential.

EA does have many good games and IP, I cannot completely boycot them but I may as well have since the last EA game I bought was BFBC2. Then there comes along this bullshit response to getting awarded what I think EA deserves. And deserves since the underhanded bullshit EA pulls is a whole lot more abundant than the other industries he mentioned even if EA's bullshit doesnt crash the stock market or kill a billion fish. They are worse in another category rather than how they treat a customer.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Now, I think those two examples of Customer Support are not quite comparable, paraphrasing aside.

Your counter example is essentially Valve being uncooperative, reluctant to return a sale and arrogantly acting like they're only giving you a refund out of the kindness of their hearts. It's perfectly understandable that you find this frustrating, because there's no reason why you should be stuck with a game that doesn't work, but by the looks of it they eventually, albeit reluctantly, gave you a process to fixing the problem, i.e. contacting Ubisoft and trading emails. That's saying "We don't want to give you your money back and we're going to make it unnecessarily hard for no reason... But fine, here you go, because we're such nice people."

However, the original example is EA being an complete and utter douche bag, starting out with some simple troubleshooting offers before essentially saying 'delete all of your program files, because fuck you', barely bothering to disguise it as technical support. That isn't being helpful. That isn't even trying to prevent a refund (god forbid), because the guy never asked for it. That's nothing more than pulling the finger and saying "We already have your money, we won't even bother helping you with simple frame rate issues. So fucking deal with it."

Edit: I'm sorry, but I don't see how your example really stands up to wAriot's example as a counter-argument. I get that you were treated badly for trying to return a faulty product, and I'm certainly not trying to be an asshole by implying that Valve was being 'acceptable' to you (even so-called 'good' companies deserve criticism where it is due to keep them on their toes), but at least you weren't insulted and bullshitted for having the audacity to ask how to get more than 30 frames per second.

And yes, I DO understand that Customer Support staff are hardly representatives of the appropriate corporation.

How are the examples not similar (besides mine being entirely paraphrasing, really wish I kept the emails)? Both show the customer service people basically just trying to move us along. Valve did not show me the way to get into contact with Ubisoft, they just told me to do so. I had to go and figure out how to get into contact with them about one of their games and how this is the hardware I had and this is the programs I was using etc. etc. and Ubisoft were actually really helpful. Valve on the other hand gave me the impression that I was being a nuisance and only gave me the refund after I had extensive amount of proof that I was not lying. I get why they needed proof, but I felt like I was being treated very poorly for a customer who had been using Steam for 4 years without making a sound.

Wariot's example is a good one of EA's terrible CS, but at no point did I see any indication that they were saying "Delete this cause fuck you", they just say, "delete this and see what happens". Yes it's poor customer service, but they were not openly insulting the person, they were trying to move them along, which is poor practice but not an open "FUCK YOU CUSTOMER".

I think both examples hold the same amount of water (bar mine has no photo copied evidence and is entirely paraphrased) and whilst the examples are of different circumstances it still shows that neither EA or Valve have very good customer service. I am a customer, just like everyone else here, who was not pleased with the way my case was handled, and for you to say that MY example holds no water makes me question whether or not we are arguing about companies needing to do better, or just you personally wanting to see EA wither and die (which quite a number of people on this site want to see happen).

I realized what an asshole I was appearing to be in my original post and edited it as above. I didn't expect you to be so quick on the draw. Please accept my most humble apologies.

However, I simply don't understand how on earth you can think that telling someone to delete their entire hard drive is 'only' trying to move someone along. I mean, really? "Try this and see what happens"? That's not trying to move someone along. You do that by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't help you' Or 'You need to talk to other people', not by insulting their intelligence. Half-heartily trying to trick someone into wiping their computer, when they came to you for help no less, is no laughing matter. Imagine if I replied to you "post too large, press Alt-F4 to show", or "Bang your head against a wall and you'll see that I'm right." You would see it as a thinly veiled 'fuck you' statement, rather than a response from someone who is willing to treat you seriously.

Again, I am not trying to belittle your experience though I certainly understand how my original comment sounded as such, and I apologize again. Customer Services are generally piss poor as they usually force you to bend over backwards just so they don't lose a sale, either by boring the consumer through wasted time or trying to make it sound like it's not their fault or responsibility. And while I agree people are too quick to hate on EA and too quick to forgive Valve of any and all faults, I simply thought that it was a much weaker example of poor customer service than the original statement.

P.S I should also mention I didn't particularly care that your example was paragraphed or lacked screenshots.

 

[JET1971]

snip

Now of course this isn't word for word, but this is the general attitude I got from Valve.

Yeah Valve does that to prevent piracy, the very same policy every brick and mortar store has about buying and returning software. You want to know something funny? Every other place I have purchased and downloaded software from does the same exact thing. I wouldnt blame them for it since downloading a game Via Steam then them refunding the money would be simpleand still be able to play it is simply have a dual boot system, buy and download the game on one OS then set it to offline mode. then swap OS and claim it doesnt work and get a refund/exchange. use the OS with the offline mode set to play it. and you can have as many of the offlines as you want with backups to have as many games as you want. For myself i bought Bioshock2 through steam and couldnt get GFWL to work on my rig so couldnt save my game and a marathon run is not my cup of tea. So I played other games and this year i swapped systems to a new one and GFWL and bioshock work fine. i didnt try to get Valve to refund because I knew about the policy. I bought the game knowing full well that it was mine even if I couldnt play it.

 

[bug_of_war]

I realized what an asshole I was appearing to be in my original post and edited it as above. I didn't expect you to be so quick on the draw. Please accept my most humble apologies.

However, I simply don't understand how on earth you can think that telling someone to delete their entire hard drive is 'only' trying to move someone along. I mean, really? "Try this and see what happens"? That's not trying to move someone along. You do that by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't help you' Or 'You need to talk to other people', not by insulting their intelligence. Half-heartily trying to trick someone into wiping their computer, when they came to you for help no less, is no laughing matter. Imagine if I replied to you "post too large, press Alt-F4 to show", or "Bang your head against a wall and you'll see that I'm right." You would see it as a thinly veiled 'fuck you' statement, rather than a response from someone who is willing to treat you seriously.

Again, I am not trying to belittle your experience though I certainly understand how my original comment sounded as such, and I apologize again. Customer Services are generally piss poor as they usually force you to bend over backwards just so they don't lose a sale, either by boring the consumer through wasted time or trying to make it sound like it's not their fault or responsibility. And while I agree people are too quick to hate on EA and too quick to forgive Valve of any and all faults, I simply thought that it was a much weaker example of poor customer service than the original statement.

P.S I should also mention I didn't particularly care that your example was paragraphed or lacked screenshots.

I wasn't offended, I was just a little taken back at how initially it seemed as though you were saying my experience was not bad and I should suck it up.

I'm going to lay this right out on the table now, I know very little about computers, so I apologise for my ignorance on the whole matter about deleting a persons hard drive. Yes, that is something that is terrible, no excuse for that and EA should seriously sack whomever was on the customer service job that day and go through some re-training.

After gaining full understanding of the previous example, yes my own experience is far different, I can see that now. I still feel though that too many people are jumping on the "Let's hate the big business" bandwagon and it's starting to get annoying, especially when my experience with EA has been spectacular.

 

[bug_of_war]

Yeah Valve does that to prevent piracy, the very same policy every brick and mortar store has about buying and returning software. You want to know something funny? Every other place I have purchased and downloaded software from does the same exact thing. I wouldnt blame them for it since downloading a game Via Steam then them refunding the money would be simpleand still be able to play it is simply have a dual boot system, buy and download the game on one OS then set it to offline mode. then swap OS and claim it doesnt work and get a refund/exchange. use the OS with the offline mode set to play it. and you can have as many of the offlines as you want with backups to have as many games as you want. For myself i bought Bioshock2 through steam and couldnt get GFWL to work on my rig so couldnt save my game and a marathon run is not my cup of tea. So I played other games and this year i swapped systems to a new one and GFWL and bioshock work fine. i didnt try to get Valve to refund because I knew about the policy. I bought the game knowing full well that it was mine even if I couldnt play it.

I know why they do it, my problem is the way they went about doing so. I understand that in their eyes I could be trying to pull a 180 on them, but that doesn't mean they can treat me poorly because of that. I was a genuine customer asking for a possible refund or trade in for a faulty game, and instead of getting a polite, "Please do this" I got, "What do you expect us to do, figure out what to do by yourself". I seriously understand WHY they don't immediately give out refunds, I really do, but I found their attitude to be horrific and not professional in the slightest.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

After the whole Microsoft thing, I'm willing to say that EA isn't the worst company.

If EA goes through with their plans, I simply don't have to buy their games (most of which I don't like, anyway). If Microsoft goes through with their plans, I simply have to avoid the entire Xbox lineup, which, given how I used to love Xbox, might be a bit hard.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

After the whole Microsoft thing, I'm willing to say that EA isn't the worst company.

If EA goes through with their plans, I simply don't have to buy their games (most of which I don't like, anyway). If Microsoft goes through with their plans, I simply have to avoid the entire Xbox lineup, which, given how I used to love Xbox, might be a bit hard.

Microsoft isn't in the race because the contest started last month and they've already been eliminated.

 

[Slash2x]

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Did anyone else read that and notice that it is the written equivalent of *drops mic and walks away from podium.*

EA has reached the point of crazy that they have thrown the shovel away and gone straight to a Oil Drill to dig their hole. Do not even have to point out how crazy they have become just wait for the next press release.

 

[Lightknight]

The tallest trees catch the most wind.

Translation: "We're perfectly fine, the problem is because we're so big and not because do business in a way that makes people genuinely hate us."

The "we can do better" statement is just a silly followup comment after making such a broad dismissal of how they're percieved and the possibility that there may actually be a reason (several reasons) for it. Heck, the fact that they dismiss it so easily is all the more illustrative of the problem at hand. They may understand games, but they don't quite understand us. They don't get that while they have a right to greed, excessive nickle and diming as well as forcing gamers into a corner (always on DRM, forcing the use of Origin when the clear competitor is vastly preferred just so they can get us a little more, etc) will get them into trouble. It's ok to be greedy. But it's bad business to let that greed take complete control and punish consumers for consuming your product.

EA, I hope you eventually get this and do get better at making yourselves look less like you're drooling over your consumer's pocketbooks. You've got a lot of great titles and it'd be a shame for those to fall into less capable hands at your dissolution. But right now your hands look a lot less capable than your competitors. Let me make this perfectly clear though, continuing to pigeon hole us and force crap on us to make your product a little more profitable at the expense of our time, convenience, enjoyment, and wallets can't be hidden by a friendly mask. It must actually be changed. Consider some of the missed opportunity in profit as a marketing and PR cost, because right now you are directly taking away good markerting and good PR to make money. Look at the SimCity fiasco, we see right past the mask and know why always on DRM is being forced. Don't lie to our face, it just makes it worse.

 

[Xarathox]

EA the worst company in America? Nah, not even close. The worst Video Game Publisher in the world, perhaps...

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Who cares? They are more easily intimidated since they are not a vital service and thus can actually be brought down with enough golden poos. Unless they take corporate action and sue to the Consumerist, they will get hit with enough poo to declare bankrupcy, or reduced to making social games in that little hole where they belong

 

[Sacul]

At the end of the day, what do you think would have happened if BP or Bank of America would?ve won another award for how badly they are operating their business? They wouldn?t even have released any kind of statement to acknowledge their win and there likely wouldn?t have been any kind of reaction at all. People are at least hoping to get a reaction and admittance out of EA, and maybe, possibly change some of the things it does.

This is what a lot of people don't realize about this, out of every company on that list that deserves the award, EA is the only one who cares, EA is the only company that everybody doesn't already hate, actually it's not even that people don't just hate them, people praise them, when EA does some scumbag thing that dicks over all it's costumers, what happens? Do people give them shit for it? No, 'journalists' flock left and right to praise them for it and say you're whiny and entitled for complaining so EA will keep sending them early releases for their games and keep buying ad space on their site so they can make money and after seeing this, seeing EA sell millions while dicking around and insulting their own costumers, guess what? Other companies follow suit and join in.

EA is a terrible company that kills off good developers and franchises, rushes out good games before they're done, enforces terrible DRM that fucks over their customers, and puts micro-transactions into every goddamn game so they can make a quick buck, when customers complain about this or even just criticize their games, they insult them and call them entitled or start backing the LGBT community so they can seem progressive and make out everybody who criticizes them to be homophobic.

EA deserves this award.

 

[wAriot]

No, EA is not known for apologising often, but in the case of Sim City (as mentioned above) they did offer 1 in 8 games as compensation, if that's not some form of apology than we better tell all those love birdsand movie directors that giving a girl wine and chocolate as an apology is wrong.

You fail to realize one thing: EA is not my girlfriend, friend or familiar. The Sim City fiasco is not something that can be fixed by saying "oh well, we screwed this up, BUT HERE, HAVE A GAME FOR FREE". It's like buying a broken car, and they offer you a plane or a boat to apologize. I WANTED a new Sim City, not a Medal of Honor. This is, of course, leaving aside the fact that they DIDN'T ACTUALLY APOLOGIZE.
On the Mass Effect example, well, obviously, not everyone liked the games. Personally, however, I LOVED them... until the third one. And no, I'm not even talking about the ending (which I think you are looking to much into -there wasn't any "hidden" meaning to it. It just ended, and in a bad way), but the "PLAY MULTIPLAYER TO UNLOCK FEATURES" and the "WE GEARS OF WAR NOW". The first game was very good. The second game left the story a bit aside, but improved in the combat, between other things. The third game was a pure, generic piece of crap.

Should we lighten up? Yes, but I don't mean stop criticising, critique is healthy, it's what keeps the gears spinning in a forwards direction. What I mean was the ferocity of the critique, too often do I see people just say, "JKADFGVKJADHNFV ZGM,NFGBS MD,SF IDIOTS THIS WAS STUPID I HATE YOU" instead of keeping their emotions settled and saying, "This is what I did not like fore these reasons, I would appreciate these things to be fixed". Now that will not always work, sometimes companies just don't listen, but if the gaming community want to be taken as mature adults (which statistics show most gamers are 30 so...) then stop hurling vulgar filled complaints at everything.

This is the same argument EA is giving: the consumers are at fault because "they hurt my feelings". This is the internet: you will find homophobes, racists, misogynists, etc. etc. etc. frigging everywhere. But for each of them there is a serious consumer with a serious complaint about your wrongdoings. You are a big business; you can't just disregard these complaints because there are some trolls between them. And, as long as they can remain anonymous, they will keep existing.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Can't wait when they get the golden poo, they will probably collapse from the barrage of negative opinions that stockowners will abandon a sinking ship

 

[gamegod25]

Number 1 is bullshit....complete and utter bullshit. Don't piss on my head and call it rain.

As for the rest it's your usual PR spin doctor crap. Dodging the issues and grasping for anything to look good.

Okay yeah, they allow LGBT characters in their games....what, you want a cookie for that? It's like saying you can't be racist cuz you have one black friend. And that doesn't give them a "get of jail free" for all the other shit.

Yes EA you CAN do better...the question is WILL you?

 

[Ayay]

Got to love :
Q: Some claim there's no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong.

Let people play your game with out register to Origin. then count. Not sure but that 45 million number would shrink so fast your head would spin (even faster then the spin he tries to put out)

 

[bug_of_war]

You fail to realize one thing: EA is not my girlfriend, friend or familiar. The Sim City fiasco is not something that can be fixed by saying "oh well, we screwed this up, BUT HERE, HAVE A GAME FOR FREE". It's like buying a broken car, and they offer you a plane or a boat to apologize. I WANTED a new Sim City, not a Medal of Honor. This is, of course, leaving aside the fact that they DIDN'T ACTUALLY APOLOGIZE.
On the Mass Effect example, well, obviously, not everyone liked the games. Personally, however, I LOVED them... until the third one. And no, I'm not even talking about the ending (which I think you are looking to much into -there wasn't any "hidden" meaning to it. It just ended, and in a bad way), but the "PLAY MULTIPLAYER TO UNLOCK FEATURES" and the "WE GEARS OF WAR NOW". The first game was very good. The second game left the story a bit aside, but improved in the combat, between other things. The third game was a pure, generic piece of crap.

No, EA isn't any semblance of lover, friend or acquaintance to any of us, they are a business that should have made sure Maxis made Sim City well enough so that everybody with the right hardware could play it. They fucked up, and a majority of people were stuck with a game that they couldn't play. In an attempt to save face the offered people 1 in 8 video games ranging form 9 dollars to 60 dollars. They did not openly say sorry, but that right there to me says that EA is a company that wants to keep their consumers happy.

Mass Effect 3 was a fine game, but like with everything not everyone liked it, and that's fine, you have explained why you didn't like it and I agree that for you the game was bad. However, the ending did have some substance in it that most people missed. I can explain this to you if need be but I think I'd be wasting both our times as the reasons you have given for not liking the game go far beyond the last 10 minutes.

This is the same argument EA is giving: the consumers are at fault because "they hurt my feelings". This is the internet: you will find homophobes, racists, misogynists, etc. etc. etc. frigging everywhere. But for each of them there is a serious consumer with a serious complaint about your wrongdoings. You are a big business; you can't just disregard these complaints because there are some trolls between them. And, as long as they can remain anonymous, they will keep existing.

I agree, they shouldn't disregard complaints, but gamers should also realise that yelling and screaming about how much they hate EA and hope they will die makes them look childish. EA and gamers need to meet in the middle, EA needs to climb down from it's money ladder and listen to what the problem is, and gamers need to mature and collect their thoughts and sought out which are the technical problems, and which are aesthetic problems. I doubt this will happen, but the screaming and insulting route has gotten people practically nowhere, why not try this one?

 

[FalloutJack]

Man oh man... I had to read it all. I don't like always going through the entirety of long threads, especially when my personal views would be the most I have to say on the matter, but I had to. I had to because it was not only enlightening, but fun to read. It's good to know that alot of people can see right through bullshit when they want to. Not all of 'em, but mostly. (It IS a little hard to take seriously the people who defend EA on a forum that hates them, writers and workers included.) Nevertheless, this is my reaction:


WOW! These guys are hilarious! Both the company and the people that burn them faster than a Pyro with a dozen hats! The thing about EA is that...it's not so much about the evilz. They're not actually evil. They're just really...really...really-really-really-really-really-really-really-really STUPID!! That's all. But then, that's why they deserve the award. They live in Plato's Allegory, in the cave of darkness, facing the wall instead of reaching for the light right behind them and getting a clue.

So much has been said that I don't even know what more CAN be said. There's no defense, no common sense, no helping 'em, no hope for 'em, no nothing. Just keep shoveling shit on their heads when they come up for air, because they don't have a use for air anyway. Nor money. Don't give them money. Just let them keep talking themselves to death. It worked on Jack Thompson and dozens of other people who don't learn anything, so let them keep hurting themselves. Like this!

 

[Michael LeBlanc]

We Can Do Better

by Peter Moore, EA chief operating officer

The tallest trees catch the most wind.

That's an expression I frequently use when asked to defend EA's place in the gaming industry. And it comes to mind again this week as we get deeper into the brackets of an annual Web poll to name the "Worst Company in America."

This is the same poll that last year judged us as worse than companies responsible for the biggest oil spill in history, the mortgage crisis, and bank bailouts that cost millions of taxpayer dollars. The complaints against us last year were our support of SOPA (not true), and that they didn't like the ending to Mass Effect 3.

This year's contest started in March with EA outpolling a company which organizers contend is conspiring to corner the world market on mid-priced beer, and (gulp) allegedly waters down its product. That debate takes place in bars - our audience lives on the Internet. So no surprise that we drew more votes there.

Let me cut to the chase: it appears EA is going to "win." Like the Yankees, Lakers and Manchester United, EA is one of those organizations that is defined by both a legacy of success, and a legion of critics (especially me regarding all three of those teams).

Are we really the "Worst Company in America?" I'll be the first to admit that we've made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn't meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate - like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don't hold water:
[ul]
[li]Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It's not. People still want to argue about it. We can't be any clearer - it's not. Period. [/li]

[li] Some claim there's no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong. [/li]

[li] Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games. [/li]

[li] We've seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really...[/li]

[li] In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we're seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America. [/li][/ul]

That last one is particularly telling. If that's what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because were not caving on that.

We are committed to fixing our mistakes. Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. We owed them that. We're constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites. The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.

I expect the debate will include a lot of comments under this post. But here's the truth: each year EA interacts with more than 350 million gamers; Origin is breaking records for revenue and users; The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3 are at the top of the mobile charts; Battlefield 3 and FIFA are stunning achievements with tens of millions of players; and SimCity is being enjoyed by millions of passionate fans all over the world.

Every day, millions of people across globe play and love our games - literally, hundreds of millions more than will vote in this contest.

So here's my response to this poll: We can do better. We will do better. But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them.

The tallest trees catch the most wind. At EA we remain proud and unbowed.

1) Yes it is. Its DRM in EVERY sense of the word. It would be better to admit to it than call customers stupid and try to deny it.

2) Difference between "registered" and "user". I'm registered but I never use it. Also I'm only registered because you merged my Bioware account. Also you force people to use origin.

3) F2P isn't a pox, your greedy, self-serving business model is a pox. Get it right. You charge people $60 and then ask for micro transactions. Even the King of AAA F2P crap, PlanetSide 2 doesn't charge $60.

Get over yourself EA. You're not some victim here. Yes you may not be as bad as Bank of America in terms of what you do but what you do affects MORE people than Bank of America. If BoA pisses off 500k people and you piss off 5 million then who has the worst reputation?

Don't like being the worst company in America? Drop the full priced micro transactions, drop the "broader appeal", drop the DRM, drop the ego, drop the forced Origin use, drop the forced social gaming. Basically stop trying to be a cartoon villain. You think we like you being terrible? You think we like you ruining SimCity, The Sims, Mass Effect, Dead Space, and Dragon Age? We would love to love you, but not with your current practices.

You have to change, not the customers.

Oh, and drop the fake numbers. You're not fooling anyone by saying how many millions of people just LOVE EA. You couldn't even break even on Dead Space 3 and Warfighter sunk faster than the Titanic.